My comments concern the production and actors, or their characters, in lower-budget, nearly forgotten, American movies which have not totally held up well over time. My conversational writing style will include details which I find interesting, odd or funny. Generally, plots are not revealed, only how the characters fit into the plot or how they equate with real life as opposed to Hollywood's thinking.

Saturday, May 6, 2017

THE JUDGE (1949)

This shoestring budgeted film is told with voice-overs through the
eyes of a judge, Jonathan Hale, who has witnessed a defense
attorney’s career rise and fall. The odd use of Gene Lanham's
wordless a cappella choral effects instead of an instrumental score
gives it an eerie, avant-garde science fiction feel...if it were the
Sixties. To finish out the Forties with it is just weird. Couple the
narration with the choral score, the opening suggests an early
television Sunday morning inspirational film. Other than the opening
melody a mixed vocal ensemble sets the mood with cued chords only.
Like a macabre “Swingle Singers.” You might recognize the first
few measures of the opening theme as sounding like a cross between,
“The Adventures of Superman” television theme and John William’s
“Superman” movie theme. Perhaps a bit ironic that John Hamilton
(The Daily Planet's Perry White) is in this film as a police
lieutenant.

Milburn
Stone plays the noted criminal attorney whose practices are at least
unethical if not illegal. “A waste of a mind misused,” so says
the judge. He is infamous for his loopholes in the law, springing the
guilty. This takes a toll on his conscience after seeing his picture
beside the word “shyster” in the dictionary. He now wants
restitution for his actions and for all those he has maligned in the
process. Speaking of maligning, enter his disloyal wife, Katherine
DeMille. She is having an affair with the county police psychiatrist,
Stanley Waxman, in his first credited film. This is no secret any
longer to Stone, whose performance sets him apart from his co-stars.
He is compelling. DeMille is not, though adequately irritating.

The
opening apartment scenes between a mental patient and a boy’s
violin practice in the next room is disturbing. Continuity takes a
hit in the early stages with the best bits past the halfway point
with an oddly used flashback dream sequence near the film’s end.
Perhaps a last minute idea to pad the film. While Stone lies
unconscious on the floor from a blow to the head, he experiences a
dream—nightmare—about
his wife. In his mind, he settles the score on their psychic rift
between them. At the end of this sequence is the funniest use of the
chorus, when Stone is slapped across the face by DeMille. As soon as
her hand makes contact we hear a rapid, “Whaah Ohh,” two-note
eerie descending chord.

Stone’s
unsettling use of a straight-jacket on his hired killer, played by
“under the radar” actor, Paul Guilfoyle and Stone's
implementation of Russian Roulette is pretty intense. He seems
possessed by a demon at this point, with the viewer not knowing who
might be killed, who wants to be killed or who will be framed for
either. The ending resolve is both ridiculously rapid and
implausible. Still, “The Judge,” is a unique seventy minutes of
film though few would call it successful. The a cappella chorus is
its defining element. “Honey, let’s go and see that film that
uses only an a cappella score!”